At one time, there were only open-outcry exchanges where traders, specifically buyers and sellers, would come together to trade in person. With the advent of electronic trading, traders can participate at their client devices from remote distances by communicating over physical networks with electronic exchanges that automatically match bids and offers.
In particular, subscribing traders are connected to an exchange's electronic trading platform by way of a communication link and through an application program interface to facilitate real-time electronic messaging between themselves and the exchange. The electronic trading platform includes at least one electronic market, which is at the center of the trading system and handles the matching of bids and offers placed by the traders for that market. The electronic messaging includes market information that is distributed from the electronic market to the traders via an electronic data feed. Once the traders receive the market information, it may be displayed to them on their trading screens. Upon viewing the information, traders can take certain actions including the actions of sending buy or sell orders to the electronic market, adjusting existing orders, deleting orders, or otherwise managing orders. Traders may also use software tools on their client devices to automate these and additional actions.
Although the amount or type of market information published by an electronic exchange often differs from exchange to exchange or from market to market, there are generally some standard pieces of information. Market information may include data that represents just the inside market. The inside market is the lowest available offer price (best ask) and the highest available bid price (best bid) in the market for a particular tradable object at a particular point in time. Market information may also include market depth. Market depth refers to quantities available at the inside market and may also refer to quantities available at other prices away from the inside market. The quantity available at a given price level is usually provided by the exchange in aggregate sums. In other words, an exchange usually provides the total buy quantity and the total sell quantity available in the market at a particular price level in its data feed. In addition to providing order book information such as price and quantity information, electronic exchanges can offer other types of market information such as the open price, settlement price, net change, volume, last traded price, the last traded quantity, and order fill information.
The extent of the market depth available to a trader usually depends on the exchange. For instance, some exchanges provide market depth for all (or most) price levels, and others may provide no market depth at all. Electronic exchanges often limit the market depth offered as market information can become intensive for network and client devices. For instance, an electronic market might offer only “5” levels of market depth, which includes the quantities available at the current top “5” buy prices and the quantities available at the current top “5” sell prices.
Regardless of whether an electronic exchange limits the enormous amount of messages being broadcast, very often the intermediary and client devices may have to handle the burden and consequently can be overwhelmed. At times, the intermediary and client devices may be unable to handle the massive processing load and, at least during those times, they cannot maintain near real-time data processing. Additionally, as more traders begin trading in electronic trading environment, the load on the intermediary and client devices is likely to continue growing at an increased rate.
Electronic exchanges and/or distributors of market information often struggle to balance the message processing load and the timeliness of market information messages with the limitations of physical networks to deliver a network friendly, data intensive, fast response market information feed. Most often, traders want access to as much of this information as fast as possible so that they can make more efficient and more effective trades. However, due to the trader's demands for near real-time market information updates, many client devices have suffered from delays in market information updates and on occasion the loss of content in the market information updates that are received. Despite the attempts made by electronic exchanges and others to improve the distribution of market information, by for example, limiting the market depth, there are still many disadvantages to the current methods of distribution, or at the very least the current solutions are incomplete.
It is therefore, beneficial to provide a trading system that offers a more dynamic method for distributing market information that will provide the traders with their desired market information as quickly as possible.